Ex-CIA contractor pleads guilty in Colorado assault case

DENVER (Reuters) - A former CIA contractor who triggered an international incident in 2011 when he killed two men in Pakistan pleaded guilty on Friday to assaulting a Colorado man in a dispute over a parking spot, prosecutors said.

Raymond Allen Davis entered the plea in Douglas County District Court to misdemeanor third-degree assault and received a two-year probationary sentence, said Lisa Pinto, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Pinto said Davis was also ordered to take anger management classes and write a letter of apology to the victim, Jeff Maes.

Davis, 38, was originally charged with second-degree felony assault in the altercation with Maes in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch in October 2011.

Officers were sent to a bagel store parking lot on reports of a fight between the two men, according to Douglas County Sheriff's spokesman Ron Hanavan.

Police said Davis started the fight and knocked Maes to the ground. He was arrested at the scene.

Maes has filed a civil lawsuit against Davis, saying he suffered two fractured vertebrae in the fight, along with emotional distress.

A U.S. Army veteran and former special forces soldier, Davis made international headlines when he shot and killed two men whom he said were trying to rob him in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore in January 2011.

Davis, who was working in Pakistan at the time under a CIA contract with Xe Services, the controversial private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, said he acted in self-defense.

He was acquitted of murder and allowed to leave Pakistan after a $2.3 million payment was made to the men's families.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the time that the U.S. government did not pay the "blood money" but would not reveal who did.